Vein cut and cross cut travertine
Travertine is a limestone that formed in layers around mineral springs, which means the stone has a grain running through it. Cut along that grain, the stone shows linear bands running end to end, which is called a vein cut. Cut across it, the same stone shows soft rounded clouds and rosettes instead, which is called a cross cut.
These look nothing alike. A vein cut travertine reads as a striped, directional stone and suits a surface where that direction means something, such as a tall panel or a run that wants to look longer. A cross cut reads as a quiet mottled field and behaves much more like a conventional stone. It is the first question to settle, before color and before finish.
Slab colors
Most of our travertine is beige, with grays, a walnut brown, a red and a black behind it. The name Noce, Italian for walnut, marks the dark brown stones, and Silver marks the gray ones.
The darker travertines get overlooked more often than anything else in the range. Travertine is filed mentally as a pale Mediterranean stone, and a gray or walnut travertine in a contemporary room reads quite differently from what most people expect the material to be.
Voids and filling
Travertine forms around mineral springs, where escaping gas leaves the holes that run through the stone. Those voids are what makes travertine recognizable, and what makes it a decision and not a default.
A slab can be supplied with them filled or left open, and one of ours carries a polished and filled surface. The beige slab page sets out what each version means for a finished surface, since the same choice comes up across the beige range.
Honed and polished
Our range splits almost evenly between honed and polished, with one leathered slab alongside them. That balance is unusual: limestone is almost entirely honed, and most of the harder stones lean polished.
It reflects two quite different ideas of the material. A honed travertine reads as the warm, matte, architectural stone it has been used as for two thousand years. A polished one is a much more decorative surface, where the reflection sits against the texture of the voids. Both are legitimate and they belong in different rooms.
Travertine in building
Travertine has been quarried near Rome since antiquity and used in buildings that are still standing after two thousand years. Few materials in a showroom have that kind of record behind them, and it is the reason the stone keeps returning and not the reason it is fashionable.
It is also why the vocabulary around it is Italian. Travertino, Noce and Romano describe the stone, the color and the origin, and the names have traveled with the material rather than being invented for a catalog.
Thickness and sizes
Most of our travertine is 1 1/4 inch with a smaller 3/4 inch group, and each piece comes at whatever size its block allowed.
The limestone page covers the wider family travertine belongs to, and the stone slab overview sets out how lots and selection work.
